Incredibly, there's actually a conservative comedian at Edinburgh this year

Artists pose to promote their show on the Royal Mile (Photo: Xinhua/Photoshot)

Last (and so far only) time I was at the Edinburgh Festival almost every stand-up routine started with a joke along the lines of “Isn’t George Bush stupid?” Almost every one mocked the “War on Terror” as being American aggression against a harmless enemy. And every comedian had a pop at the Government for not being Left-wing enough, despite it then being well on the way to building up a wartime level of debt. Oh, how I laughed.

This is a perennial problem with being Right-wing and liking comedy, especially as the older one gets, the more tedious and infantile political comedy on TV seems, and the higher the risk of the dreaded sense of humour failure. (As for the bias of Radio 4’s News Quiz, put it this way – Jeremy Hardy is easily the most Right-wing regular. They probably call him "Pinochet" in the green room.)

But apparently there’s actually a comedian doing Edinburgh who agrees with me and he is – unbelievably – a conservative.

Tom Greeves writes on ConservativeHome about the difficulties of being conservative in the comedy scene, and how television producers would not even consider asking a Right-wing comedian to appear. This is not only biased, it’s unfunny and tedious, because there are only a handful of comedy memes allowed, and they get endlessly recycled. He lists the following:

David Cameron is an Old Etonian Oxford graduate who has no idea how real people live. I happen to think it's a good thing that the Prime Minister is so well educated…

The rich are to blame for everything. Why not have a pop at those public sector staff with ludicrous pay and pensions (not just MPs) or violent strikers, seeing as they actually cause the country harm?…

The Israelis always act in a disproportionate manner and are invariably in the wrong. Oh for crying out loud, read a decent newspaper and maybe, you know, actually visit Israel if you're so interested…

The Queen eats swans.All right, that one was quite funny the very first time – but they say it whenever I watch Mock the Week."

All of which are about as funny as “Michael Jackson is white” or Bill’n’Monica jokes. Here are the ones which I would add:

The Pope was a Nazi. Of course I’m sure all those comedians in the same position as the young Joseph Ratzinger would have refused to serve in the Hitler Youth once their teacher had automatically signed them up. Of course.

Americans are stupid. Yes, so thick they put a man on the moon and control a quarter of the world’s economy. What dimwits.

Of course comedy will always be Left-wing, being dominated by the young and the hip. And there’s also the fact that while Right-wing ideas are obviously stupid in theory while workable in practice, Left-wing ideas are obviously right and just, while a failure in reality. It’s easy to point out the absurdities of, for example, religious dogma or gross inequality in a comedy sketch; quite harder to explain why progressive taxes can reduce the tax base or how the welfare system has destroyed family life. If there’s a comedian who can pull that off, I’d like to see them.

I’ve never seen Tom Greeves so I can’t judge whether he’s as funny as Left-wing comedians like Stewart Lee, Dara O’Briain or David Mitchell, but if anyone’s in Edinburgh, give him a try.